Method and apparatus for impairment correlation estimation in a wireless communication receiver

Abstract

A wireless communication receiver improves signal impairment correlation estimation in MIMO/MISO systems by considering different transmit power allocations and different transmit antenna power distributions in its impairment correlation calculations. The receiver may be implemented in according to a variety of architectures, including, but not limited to, Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) Generalized RAKE (G-RAKE), Joint Detection (JD) G-RAKE, and Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) G-RAKE. Regardless of the particular receiver architecture adopted, the improved impairment correlations may be used to calculate improved (RAKE) signal combining weights and/or improve channel quality estimates for reporting by receivers operating in Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) systems transmitting HSDPA channels via MIMO or MISO transmitters. A transmitter may be configured to facilitate impairment correlation determinations by wireless communication receivers operating in MIMO/MISO environments, by signaling one or more values, e.g., data-to-pilot signal transmit power ratios and/or transmit antenna power distributions for the data and pilot signals.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. A method of supporting impairment correlation estimations by wireless communication receivers operating in a Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) or Multiple-Input-Single-Output (MISO) communication system that includes a transmitter having multiple transmit antennas and transmitting one or more data and pilot signals, the method comprising:
 signaling at least one of a data-to-pilot signal transmit power ratio and transmit antenna power distributions for the data and pilot signals being transmitted by the wireless communication transmitter; and 
 dynamically updating said signaling as a function of a current Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) mode.